Forecasting the responses of beetle community metrics

Anna I. Spiers and Brett Melbourne, Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, Carl Boettiger and Kari EA Norman, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, Tad A. Dallas, Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, Nico M. Franz and Kelsey Yule, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, Eric R. Sokol, Batelle, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Boulder, CO, Eric R. Sokol, INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, Thilina D. Surasinghe, Department of Biological Sciences, Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA

Biodiversity monitoring is critical for evaluating environmental quality and anticipating effects of global change on communities. However, most community-scale predictive models are limited in spatiotemporal extent and taxonomic resolution, which hinders their generalizability. Ground beetles (Family: Carabidae), a common and speciose group, are sentinel indicators that make an excellent study system for developing community-scale forecasts. In this forecasting challenge, teams leverage NEON’s continent-wide carabid monitoring to forecast their abundance and species richness weekly at all 47 terrestrial NEON sites. Forecast results from diverse teams can recommend areas for management priority and illuminate the current capabilities and limitations of such efforts.